There is certainly something to be said about having a second
job in a bookstore. You often come across material you might not
have otherwise discovered had you been merely passing through on a
short visit.

Such was the discovery of a book entitled “The War Journal of
Major Damon ‘Rocky’ Gause: The firsthand Account of One of the
Greatest Escapes of World War II.” As a member of that obscenely
large generation known as the Baby Boomers, we are well acquainted
with “The Great Escape,” a movie from 1963 which featured
well-known actors from both Britain and the United States and took
part in Bavaria, near the Swiss border. Though based on actual
fact, “The Great Escape” was still, well, Hollywood.

Major Damon Gause’s account of his 159-day ordeal to escape from
the Philippines is the stuff of Hollywood and actually a surprise
such an endeavor was pulled off considering the tight and cruel
grip the Japanese placed on that island territory.

Though some of his account appeared in “The New York Times
Magazine” May 2, 1943 issue and several other publications during
the war, no more was heard of this fascinating experience until
1999, when it came out in book form. It included an enthusiastic
introduction by Stephen E. Ambrose, who felt compelled enough to
advise the reader “I’d further recommend it to anyone who thinks
the Japanese behavior in World War II has been maligned.”

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, was not an
isolated affair but a coordinated onslaught to attack and capture
both American and British possessions in the Eastern Pacific.
Though General Douglas MacArthur, the supreme army commander in the
Philippines, had an eight-hour warning of Japanese intentions as a
result of the Pearl Harbor attack (it was actually Dec. 8 in
Manila), the Japanese still managed to bomb unprepared military
installations on this Pacific archipelago. And within three weeks
Lieutenant General Masaharu Homma launched a two-prong amphibious
invasion of the main Philippine Island of Luzon, which housed the
capital of Manila.

Caught up in all this horror was then-Lt. Damon Gause, an Army
Air Corps trained dive-bomber with the 27th Bombardment Group, and
a newlywed of barely two weeks. He not only personally experienced
the siege but the slow, agonizing retreat up the Bataan Peninsula.
You have to realize the Philippines are a jungle and not only were
the American and Philippine forces facing a well-armed and well-fed
Japanese invader, but battling insects, malaria and
malnutrition.

The battle for Bataan lasted from Jan. 1, 1942 to April 9. And
the Island of Corregidor did not fall until early May. As
infuriated as the Japanese were that the struggle for the
Philippines took more than six months, from the first bombings to
the fall of Corregidor, they were even more disgusted and filled
with contempt and rage that the American and Philippines forces
surrendered at all. The Japanese illustrated their utter disrespect
for the vanquished foe by forcing them on a hike that came to be
known as the Bataan Death March. Of the estimated 70,000 captured,
nearly “10,000 Filipino and American servicemen died from hunger,
thirst, disease, and the brutality of the enemy captors along the
death march route.”

If anyone attempted to seek a drink of water from a stream or
collapsed during the march and could not get up, they were
dispatched by bayonet, shot or beheaded by the Japanese.

Gause was captured by the Japanese on Bataan, but before he
could be marched off to the prison camps 64 miles inland on Luzon,
he turned the table and used a bayonet on a Japanese guard and
escaped into the jungle and hid. He eventually made his way into
the sea and swam the more than three miles through “shark-infested
waters” to the fortress of Corregidor. Unbeknown to him, the
“fortress-island” was now faltering under a constant barrage of
enemy fire (nearly one shell every five seconds), with supplies
quickly dwindling and the wounded and sick filling the cavernous
interior of the island. There was no hope of any help arriving from
the outside and thus Lt. Gen. Johathan Wainwright accepted the
terms of surrender and Corregidor and its occupants fell under
Japanese control.

There is film footage of the Japanese takeover the island and
shows them as they pull down the American flag and contemptuously
drop it on the ground and step on it. Gause had a clear idea of
what awaited the fallen defenders of Corregidor and wanted no part
of it. Once again he slipped off the island by boat and swimming
and made his way back to occupied territory, this time hidden by
natives until he was able to make it out to some of the smaller
islands and eventually to a seaworthy enough boat that managed to
get him and a fellow American, William Lloyd Osborne, to
Australia.

Gause and Osborne’s story was not only told in a 22-part
interview for the New York Daily Mirror, but the two Americans
received the Distinguished Service Cross. Gause made his way back
stateside and was home long enough to father a son and to hold him
in his arms. By January 1944, Gause was stationed in England and
training for the invasion of Europe. However in early March, now
with the rank of major, Damon Gause was killed when a P-47 fighter
he was training in crashed near London.

So how come Hollywood keeps giving us remakes of television
shows, mini-series, or of earlier films when there is so much new
material out there that would make good entertainment, as well as
providing some much needed historical information to several new
generations of Americans who are, frankly, clueless about the
Second World War? Oh goodness, I forgot, this is the politically
correct Hollywood of the 21st Century with the likes of George
Clooney and Sean Penn at the helm.

Well, to heck with Hollywood. If you want to find positive
material about your nation and its history, you still basically
need to read a book. I know, for a fact, that as of this writing
there are still two copies of “The War Journal of Major Damon
‘Rocky’ Gause” at the Foothills Mall’s Barnes and Noble. Goodness,
what an unabashed plug. But hey, that’s my part-time career,
selling books.